"The name on the building is gone. So is the fast-moving video display of clouds in a blue sky over a wheat field combed by wind and followed by a message: “Delivering our firm to clients worldwide.”

In their place on the façade of the 32-story headquarters building of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. at 745 Seventh Avenue in Manhattan is the white and blue logo of Barclays Plc. Inside, former Lehman employees still wear the green and white security badges of the 158-year-old bankrupt investment bank and wonder if they’ll be gone.

Nine days after Barclays agreed to pay $1.75 billion for Lehman’s investment banking and capital markets, including its headquarters, former Lehman employees at 745 say they’re in limbo on whether they’ll be retained by Barclays and under what conditions."

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

if there were a single headline that sums up Vince Farrell’s attitude towards the whole crisis, it is the one he just wrote this morning: “Let the Leaders Lead: It’s time to act, and we have the right people doing the job”

Bush-haters should take note their own party was at the helm in Congress – Barack and Nancy included – when the storm was easily visible, and did NOTHING to stop it. Democrats Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are big advocates of the Paulson Plan. Barack Hussein Obama, Agent of Change, is essentially trying to sidestep the whole thing RIGHT NOW as a sitting US Senator. He, Barney, and Nancy will not save you.

Politically, I think the GOP has to position itself as “against” the bailout. It’s a great move.

Their actual plan looks like “Skippy instead of Jif”. But, just the fact that they’re “against” something Bush proposed helps at a superficial level support the argument (within GOP circles) that Bush “is a liberal and not a conservative”. If the Dems appear to be more politically aligned with the Toxic President on the most important event right before the election, then people might conclude Obama — not McCain — represents “4 more years”.

At the very least, it makes matters so confusing that it might take away the political advantage Obama had on economic matters. Instead of talking about policy, now the MSM is discussing a narrow, inconsequential issue of “who parachuted in and did it help?”. It’s another “missing white woman” headline to entertain and distract.

@wunsacon: You might be right but unless they put a muzzle on Palin over the next 5 weeks, McCain is toast. She’s utterly clueless and even conservative hacks are starting to admit that.

If the race issue wasn’t a factor, this would already be over. That’s the only thing keeping the race remotely close (if you assume the polls are right, which I don’t because they’re vastly underestimating voter turnout) at this point.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are delaying decisions about year-end
compensation until they have a better idea over fourth-quarter revenue figures.
Compensation expenses are dropping sharply across the major firms. Credit
Suisse said compensation expenses for the first half were down 43% year-overyear
while UBS said compensation expenses were down 50%. For more, take a
look at page 4 of today’s FT, “Big Investment Banks Postpone Bonus Decisions.”

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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